Northwest Schools.

Course Disciplines Merge In `Learning Communities'

In an effort to help college students think "outside the box" and become more well-rounded, some colleges across the country have started to combine different disciplines in one class under a curriculum approach known as "learning communities."

The result has been classes with such titles as "Sex Differences: Insights from Biology, Film and Literature" at the University of Cincinnati, and "Global Village," an offering last quarter at Harper College in Palatine that blended linguistics, philosophy, psychology, English and biology.

A new semester's worth of "learning community" courses got under way Tuesday at Harper. The school started such interdisciplinary programs several years ago and now is at the forefront of the movement.

About 150 Harper students are enrolled this semester in the seven courses. The class "Voices for Freedom: African and Native Americans Speak Out" is designed for honors students and combines the subjects of African-American history and minority literature.

Another course, "Being Human in the New Millennium," combines psychology and philosophy to address such essential questions as "Who are you?" "Where are you going?" and "Where have you been?"

Harper launched its learning-communities program, "Get Connected," in 1992 after a professor returned from a national teaching conference where she had heard about the idea. The program was one of the first of its kind in Illinois, said the program's coordinator, Jacque Mott.

"I think the students can engage, absorb even, the material so much deeper when you can show the relationship between science (and the humanities), for example," Mott said. "When they do that, there's better retention in the class."

The Harper program has been gaining in popularity over the years: Most of the courses offered this semester were full by the end of the early-registration period in December.

"It's really caught on," Mott said. "Finally, the word is out there on campus. . . . Students are very enthusiastic. They like the format."

The college recently sponsored a conference on learning communities in downtown Chicago that was attended by educators from all over the country.

At the conference, University of Cincinnati professor Nan Adler talked about how creating a successful learning-communities course can be tough for instructors.

Forging a link among disciplines was the goal for Adler and two colleagues when they decided to draw from their expertise and create a course on sex differences that draws from biology, film and literature.

Many professors have a very rigid view of how a class should be taught, Adler said, and often are concerned that they won't have enough time in a combined-subject class to provide the kind of detail they deliver in a single-discipline class.

"There are a lot of sacrifices you have to make when you have a team," said Adler, an associate professor of mathematics.

But many instructors have come to realize that synthesizing and condensing material doesn't mean students will be cheated out of information--they'll just get it delivered differently. Also, a course that covers two disciplines, for example, would last twice as long as a single-discipline course.

Students are graded in an interdisciplinary course in various ways, including testing and projects. Most schools give students credit for each discipline covered by the course. If a course combines science and English, a student might get credit for both.

But such courses can be bad news for students who fail or decide to drop the class.

"Looking at it from a logistical standpoint, that can be a problem," said Jerry Zimmerman of Lower Columbia College in Longview, Wash. "You're talking about dropping two or three classes at one time."

Still, instructors believe the courses have been successful and help make students more well-rounded.

"I think what we're doing in many of these classes is seeing that there's a practical side (to this information) and how it relates to our lives," Zimmerman said. "The world is not a singular discipline; it's interdisciplinary."